She did not go gentle into that good night. The ice maidens skull bears evidence of violent death: a two-inch (five-centimeter) fracture and a broken socket around her right eye. The injuries are typical of someone who has been hit by a baseball bat, observed radiologist Elliot K. Fishman. His conclusion: She was killed with a club.

The blow caused a massive hemorrhage, which killed the ice maiden. Her skull filled with blood, shoving the brain to one side. Otherwise, Fishman noted, it would have dried neatly and symmetrically in the center of her skull.

Couldnt the injury have happened after death, perhaps from a rock hitting the corpse? No, said Fishman. Such intense bleeding could not have happened after death and the fracture would have looked different had something struck the frozen body. The ice maiden was alive when her skull cracked.